Scrapbook compiled by the Suffragette Marion Holmes Page 1

Scrapbook compiled by the Suffragette Marion Holmes, a leading member of the Women's Freedom League. The scrapbook includes newspaper cuttings from national and local newspapers and The Vote (the newspaper of the WFL) referencing the Suffragette campaign both nationally and in and around Croydon where she was President of the local branch of the Women's Social and Political Union. The scrapbook also includes private handwritten letters, printed flyers, and campaign leaflets documenting Marion's role in the WSPU and WFL as well as a court summons relating to her arrest in October 1908 during a WFL demonstration outside Parliament.
Marion Holmes (d. 1943) was born in Wortley, South Yorkshire. She co-founded the Margate Pioneer Society, which held debates about social issues, particularly those relevant to women. In 1907 Holmes was president of the Croydon branch of the Women's Social and Political Union. Later that year the branch joined the Women's Freedom League, which had just been established, and Holmes became a member of its national executive. She was joint editor of WFL newspaper 'The Vote' from 1909. Much of Holmes's day-to-day work for the WFL consisted in travelling countrywide to campaign during by-elections. Marion was married to Philip Holmes a dispensing chemist. They had two daughters, Dorothy Milner Holmes born 1889 in Hampshire and Elinor Beatrice [Betty] Milner Holmes, born 3 June 1903 in Merstham, Surrey.